Don't Watch Begotten

I’m back! What a year and a half it has been. From personal stuff to a pandemic, it feels like a final battle of a video game. And since I have a lot of free time from procrastinating school and making music with four different groups/bands, I decided to add to my already busy schedule and do something that everyone else has done already: Watch “Disturbing” movies and give my own, non-film critic criticism. And I’m going to continue this in the future, I have ten (possibly more) movies to get through. Call it a series, if you will.

The way the rating factor is as follows: The “Disturbo Factor” is a scale of 1.0-10. Overall movie rating is also 1.0-10.

Disclaimer: There are talks of nudity, sexual violence, and disturbing imagery. I’m a Trained Professional, I watch this shit so you don’t have to. And a very obvious Spoiler Alert is now in effect. If you want to watch this movie without it getting spoiled, I suggest you come back to read this after your viewing. Now, on to today’s movie, ‘Begotten’.

Back when I was a little edgy teen, I watched a little bit of this movie. And now here I am, a tall edgy adult, rewatching it. I came across this movie because a very famous screencap of this film is associated with a Creepypasta (online horror story). The name of that Creepypasta? I don’t remember it, but either way, my edge-lord brain thought It was a cool picture so I searched for the source, found the origin movie, and let me tell you!... I was bored with it. It’s a black and white movie made in 1993 with no dialogue. The Director, Edmund Elias Merhige wanted to make this experimental horror film as a critique of how we treat the world or something artsy like that. But anyway, let’s see if 22-year-old me has the same idea of ‘Begotten’ as 14-year-old me.

Thankfully, this movie is free, on YouTube, for everyone to enjoy it in its resplendent (or lack thereof) Glory. The movie opens with some vague poem about death or whatever by “Unknown” because there is no name attached to it. Then, we get the first shot, which my initial thought was “What in the hell am I looking at?” I would honestly try to explain it to you, but It’s like trying to describe yellow to a blind person. The music, by the way, is only Drone sounds, ambient noises, screams, cries, and hums (kind of like my solo music career). Then we get the title card: ‘BEGOTTEN’.

The next shot is of a humanoid in a cabin. The humanoid is thought to be God (I had to look up a synopsis to understand this color-muted acid trip I was experiencing). God begins to disembowel itself, then dies. After this deity commits Seppuku and plays with his small intestine, a woman, thought to be Mother Earth crawls out from under his cloak and begins to impregnate herself with the corpse of the freshly dead Creator. Yes, this movie is free, on YouTube, for anyone to watch. Parents, please take notice of what your younglings are exposed to.

It shows everything. The fondling, the ejaculation, insertion, EVERYTHING. It’s absolutely foul and very distasteful. Please keep this in mind for a later scene I will be talking about later. Even if you aren't someone who identifies as Asexual (No interest or feelings of sexual pleasure) like myself, it’s still a very, VERY uncomfortable scene to watch. And it drags out for so damn long. Have you ever watched a movie with your parents and there is a sex scene? And now it’s quiet and awkward, and you check your phone and don’t make eye contact, etc. Yeah well, I would rather be in that position one hundred times in a row than have to watch this scene alone again. Anyways Gaea (The personification of Mother Earth) gets knocked up by a dead God, and now we move on to the next chapter of the movie.

It opens with a teleporting coffin, thought to be the coffin that holds the Almighty that got Gaea pregnant. Gaea walks up to the fourth-dimensional coffin, holding her nine-month-bulging stomach, and the coffin disappears out of existence. We then ask James Hetfield what to do in this situation and he says “Fade to Black”. After we come from the fade, we see Gaea standing at the shore of a lake. I guess she gives birth at this point, obviously with some weird fever-dream visuals. And I say ‘assume’ because the “child” lying on the ground beside her is 20 at the youngest, and Gaea is no longer pregnant. Must’ve been one hell of a pregnancy. Homie came out already speaking a common language and knowledgeable in Calculus. This dude has better facial hair than all of the Folk-Punk music scene combined. Anyway, Aias (Personification of the Son of Earth) is deformed, constantly shaking, and is malnourished. And Gaea, the caring parent she is, leaves him on the ground and walks away to fend for himself. Do I hear “Mother of the Year”?

After Aias is on the ground struggling for a while, we see a group of druids come to his side. Not sure what the druids symbolize, it wasn’t in the synopsis but I assume them to be the creatures of the world? I am too invested in this movie already, so why not spit out my thoughts? Anyway, the druids come bearing gifts, some drums, steel bells, lanterns, incense burner, rope, just the normal ceremonial stuff. They tie up Aias and carry him off in a horrible bondage-looking rope contraption. It’s a long, drawn-out scene, just like my articles. They begin to climb a mountain, then remove what I assumed was wicked facial hair off Aias. Turns out what I mistook for a beard was a placenta or a gigantic tumor, or some bodily mishap like that. And now we run into one of many reasons why I dislike this movie. I don’t know what in the DPH trip is going on. It’s a 1993 film shot like it came out in 1919, and even at that those movies made 74 years before are better to watch. It’s an eyesore, and to be honest I had to rewind multiple times because I either caught myself checking my phone, or was so confused as to what I was seeing I had to run the tape back.

Before they can reach their destination on a mountain top, Aias begins to convulse heavily. It seems to be a seizure, and he’s coughing up blood. The druids run to him (the ones not carrying him at least) and attempt to save him, or at least it looks like.

After this point I have no idea what the hell is going on, the druids light a fire, some are dressed as ghosts, it looks like they drag Aias down a mountain, even though their destination was on top. It’s a certified shit-show, and this movie already didn’t have my full attention, so now I’m really lost. And I don’t want to keep going back to the cliff notes on the movie because it’s a waste of my time. So, from here on out I will try to give you the best explanation of this “movie” as I possibly can:

Aias seizes out some more by the fire and the druids stab him and water-board him, I think? I don’t know there is a rag on his face and a clear liquid dripping off it. While killing this dude on a flat on a mountain top, the druids have the bright idea of carrying his limp, lifeless, dense body up to the top plateau.

(At this point I just got back from a 2-hour journey to Costco with my mum, so now I REALLY have no idea where I am or what is happening in the movie.)

Once they get Placenta Face- I mean, Aias- up the mountain to the actual plateau they (I assume) meant to get to, they bury him? I think? There is a shot of some dude throwing dirt at Aias’ corpse, but the rest of the druids are still standing around Aias, seemingly still carrying him? I don’t know, I’m two beers in (I needed them to get through this god-awful film) so now I’m really trying to figure out what’s happing. Might make a drinking game out of this. “Drink when you get so utterly bored only booze can fill the hole of excitement this movie is missing”. You’ll be in the ER for alcohol poisoning in no time.

Night falls on our beloved druids, and now it seems a different set of people, I will call them Nomads, are shown carrying what seems to be a comedic stretcher used in Charlie Chaplin films. Now, it could be the druids, but they’re not cloaked the same, and these people have innovation, and 2 brain cells between them, unlike our last group. The druids had the combined IQ of a sock. It’s also nice to mention the Nomad group are all women, or at least seem to be, which makes a lot more sense as to why they’re smarter (men can be pretty brain-dead at times). They seem to have Mother Gaea held captive. Or at least in the group with them, her hands are tied and- oh hey look! Aias is still alive… wait, what?

The druids pull an Austin Powers, screaming “Why won’t you die?!” with their actions, because again, no dialogue, and give him the good ol’ pirate necklace: a noose. They don’t hang him, though. They just pull the rope as our protagonist(?) lies on the floor. The movie then tries its hand at its best Breakfast Club ending with a freeze-frame and another fade to black.

Plot twist! The druid that is dragging Aias around like a stuffed animal on a leash is Gaea, even though a druid puts the rope around his neck. They are now in a wooded area and we are then greeted with more fever-dream visuals cut with the druids walking. It looks as if the Dopesmoker album cover was in black and white, and not as cool (at least one Doom Metal fan enjoyed that reference). They come across some cement tubes where Gaea and Aias are. The druids then ever so gently bash Aias with a club, but the made-of-iron-man isn’t letting the fire die out just yet. He again convulses and spits up blood and we are all now thinking, “Hey! I’ve seen that scene somewhere before!”

Remember when I said to keep in mind the fact that they show everything? Well, I’m not going to go into full detail, but please be conscious of that statement.

The druids begin to mutilate Aias in another very hard-to-watch scene. Clubbing his private area with rocks and sticks and other things, while pulling the rope tied around his neck up another mountain. Gaea is just standing there, star gazing or something. She’s always looking up doing nothing. Another set of these sick druids begin to beat and disrobe Gaea to have their way with her, making this scene one-thousand times more uncomfortable than the first. Again, this is free, on YouTube. Gaea is limp, looks to be lifeless and the druids keep on going. It’s sick, it’s drug out, and it’s tough to watch, and like the last sexually explicit scene, it’s very distasteful. The edits between the main concept in the scene are so disorientating. You have no idea what you’re watching, you get lost, trying to figure out what is happening, you begin to feel dizzy until there is a cut to foul happenings, then you think “Oh yeah… that’s still happening…” and then you get sick from the main premise of the scene. And I cannot stress this enough. It is FREE ON YOUTUBE and it SHOWS EVERYTHING.

The druids finish their sick violation of Gaea and leave, abandoning a dead limp and assaulted Gaea, and a very still alive Aias to mourn for his mother. Some guys dressed like the storms from Big Trouble in Little China come to bag up the body of Gaea. I don’t know either, don’t look at me like that.

They leave Aias alone, looking more distraught than ever, and for a second time in the movie, Aias is in the wilderness to fend for himself. The Storms take the body of Gaea to a mountainside and begin to do some mining, I think? They chip away at the side, and the body bag is hanged. they then take out the body of Gaea from the bag and BOOM! dead, blood-soaked boobie right in your face! The Storms begin to clean off the body of Gaea with their hand or a rag, or something. This film is too damn dark, production-wise. I can’t tell what is what unless of course, it’s an R-Rated area, then the director makes it a point for that shit to be well lit and recognizable.

The storms have a colony, so other scarecrow-looking fools come to help with the cleaning of Gaea’s body. They carry her away, a windstorm begins, night falls, it begins to rain, and holy smokes, Aias is still alive. The sun comes up and Aias does his best army crawl across a beach. The druids find him, bag him up and try to kill the obvious unkillable Aias one more time by bringing down a sledgehammer on the bag over and over again. They carry him off and take him to the Scarecrows that are posted up in the mountain, and at this point, I think “oh. They’re the same clan, maybe the ones with straw hats are higher-ups?” I don’t know and at this point don’t care, the movie is almost over and I’m excited to see the credits’ role so I don’t have to sit through this torture anymore.

The druids do more mining and pounding and other useless things. Then it cuts to flowers wilting, dying out, then a seedling begins to grow. Night turns to day, more trees, a flashback to Gaea dragging Aias through the forest, some heavily decayed bodies, another shot of the woods, and then finally, the black screen.

Let the credits roll! Seeing them was like a reward for me. Fun fact, Aias is credited as “Son of Earth-Flesh and Bone” so I guess that means mother earth doesn’t want us here? These art majors need to stop being so… eccentric. Also, the druids are credited as “All other life” so yeah, screw all humans, I guess that is the takeaway from all of this.

Now: Is this movie disturbing? In a way. The very few scenes in here that categorize it as such are so demented and twisted that it takes the flow of the movie from zero to one hundred quickly. But they put all of their eggs into those three baskets. It catches you off guard and it did make my skin crawl, but they are not useful to whatever plot was maybe there. It goes from a commentary art project to a snuff film so quickly I felt my soul jump out of my body.

Was the movie good? Absolutely not. Snoozefest. Totally and undeniably trash. I don’t recommend this movie to even my worst enemies. A too self-conscious art boy went so full circle on this that it became no longer art. It is practically unwatchable. I feel like I must sue the director for the two hours of my life back.

Disturbo Factor rating: 4.5

Overall Rating: 0

Do not even attempt to watch this. I lost brain cells, HP, time, and more importantly, patience.